Hitherto, a service providing apparatus and a service providing system for rendering services in response to a service request from a client apparatus on a network have been known.
For example, in association with the remarkable spread of communication by the Internet, network supported apparatuses have rapidly been progressed so that not only conventional personal computers but also user interactive devices such as PDA (Personal Digital Assistance), cellular phone, and the like, image processing apparatuses such as scanner, printer, copying apparatus, digital camera, and the like, and household appliances such as television, air-conditioner, refrigerator, and the like are made to communicate over the network.
In association with such a progress, in order to improve ease of use and simplicity upon using those network supported devices, there have been proposed various protocols for providing automatic setting means of a network address, discovering means of the network device, and automatic setup means of application software for controlling the network supported devices, utility software, operating system, and the like. For example, there are protocols such as “Universal Plug and Play” whose standardization is being progressed mainly by Microsoft Corporation, “BMLinkS” which is progressed by Japan Business Machine Makers Industrial Association (JBMIA), “Renedzvous” which is supported by “Apple OSX”, and the like.
While the ease of use and simplicity are improved as a result of the proposition of those protocols, it also caused such a necessity that the network devices correspond to those plurality of protocols. Although the plurality of protocols can be implemented in devices such as high-end copying machine, printer, and the like having large-scaled hardware and a large amount of software-resources, with respect to other devices, each protocol has to be implemented in accordance with a use application, so that it becomes a factor of an increase in development costs. The devices which have already been put into the market and are in an operating state on the network cannot correspond to such protocols.
As means for solving such a problem, a method of making a device called a Proxy or Bridge operative on the network and allowing it to execute a proxy process for the protocol correspondence is ordinarily used.
According to such a conventional technique, however, when a protocol converting process is intended to be executed, for example, if one certain device corresponding to a plurality of protocols A and B exists among other devices, when the device searches the network, the device is recognized as different devices as one searched by the protocol A and the other searched by the protocol B.
When the device executes' the search by a predetermined protocol, it receives a response through a proxy server (protocol converting server). At this time, there is such a problem that when a plurality of protocol converting servers are activated, if one device responds to a searching request, such a response is converted by a plurality of proxy servers for executing the protocol conversion, respectively, and the response from the searched device is made from each proxy server a plurality of times. Consequently, when the search is made, if a plurality of proxy servers exist, it seems as if a plurality of devices existed.